REVIEW: David Mitchell Live

Firstly, I love David Mitchell.

I find his awkward charm and self-depricating manner endearing and I love his direct, razor sharp wit.

Secondly, I am a huge fan of the De La Warr Pavilion.

I’ve been to gigs, seen stand-up and taken in various exhibitions at this gorgeous venue and have never once come away feeling disappointed.

So in theory, David Mitchell at the DLWP should have been the perfect evening out for this Bexhillian.

Well, not quite.

For a start, many people seemed to be under the impression that David Mitchell Live would see the comedian show off his satirical genius during an engaging one man stand-up show.

But what we got instead was a rather flat one hour and 15 minutes of David plugging his new book - with the man himself sometimes struggling to get a word in edgeways with a rather over-bearing interviewer taking more than her fair share of the spotlight.

I don’t know if we just didn’t pay enough attention when booking our tickets, or whether the nature of the event wasn’t made entirely clear on the De La Warr website.

But we certainly weren’t the only ones who weren’t fully aware of the ‘in conversation’ nature of the evening.

A number of people took to Facebook to express their disappointment after the show had finished.

Others didn’t even wait and just walked out, mid-performance.

And matters weren’t helped by the interviewer, who had the most irritating habit of cutting David off mid-sentence.

Somebody really needed to tap her on the shoulder and gently remind her that no one in the building had stumped up 20-odd quid to listen to her.

The part of the show where the audience were allowed to ask questions perked up the proceedings slightly, with some rather leftfield offerings provoking some giggles.

But sadly this part of the evening was wrapped up far too quickly.

David Mitchell was fabulous as usual, but it just would have been nice to have heard more from him.

Don’t get me wrong, it was by no means a bad night out.

But it just could have, and should have, been so much better.